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 APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070024-2

Military Geography

A. General (U/OU)

Located on the North European Plain between Western Europe and the U.S.S.R., Poland has the painful distinction of being a historical area of armed conflict. The country has been ravaged for centuries by superior military forces and laid waste by armies that have taken advantage of its easy terrain to reach objectives elsewhere.

All of Poland's land boundaries are shared with comember Warsaw Pact countries—East Germany to the west, Czechoslovakia to the South, and the U.S.S.R. to the east (Figure 25). In the north there is a 305-mile coast exposed to the Baltic Sea. The country's southern borders are marked by a chain of mountains and hills that effectively interrupt the movement of ground forces except through a river gap known as the Moravian Gate.

Together with East Germany, Poland functions as a Soviet buffer zone against attack from the west. Conversely, this position provides a choice stage to muster offensive forces against the NATO line of defense in the west; most NATO-affiliated European capitals are less than 1,200 nautical miles away (Figure 1).

Since World War II, Poland has been transformed from a predominantly rural and agricultural society into a society that is predominantly urban and industrial. Postwar government politics of urbanization and industrialization have caused a general movement of population from the countryside into existing and newly created urban centers. Calling to mind the fierce but futile Warsaw Uprising during World War II, these centers may play a fortress role in future conflicts.

A roughly square-shaped country approximately 400 miles on a side, Poland has an area of 120,600 square miles and is slightly larger than Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky combined (Figure 1). The estimated population is about 33.2 million. The country would be hard to defend, except in the mountainous south, because of a lack of natural barriers. Rivers are the only hindrance to the free movement of military ground forces in most of the country (Figure 25), and even the largest streams form only limited obstacles.

'''FIGURE 1. Location and comparative area (U/OU)''' (picture)

B. Topography (U/OU)

Approximately 90% of Poland is a densely populated, mostly cultivated, rolling plain crossed by generally north-flowing, meandering streams. The remainder of the country, the extreme south and southwest, consists of the rounded, forested, sparsely populated Sudeten Mountains and the more rugged, forested, sparsely populated Carpathian Mountains.

C. Climate (U/OU

The climate is predominantly maritime but is modified at times by continental influences. During winter (December through February) the intense

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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070024-2